Lead, deal, and order — plain definitions for product sellers

Product sellers borrow sales words from services and software. On a shop floor the useful plain meanings are simple — for teams that sell goods, not a funnel lecture.

Lead (лид)

A lead is a person (or chat) who showed interest but has not yet bought. Examples: “how much is size M?”, a click on a catalog link, a comment “хочу.” A lead is demand signal, not revenue and usually not a stock reserve.

Deal (сделка)

A deal is the commercial agreement taking shape: which SKUs, at what price, with what terms. In some teams “deal” means the negotiation stage; in others it means the won agreement before fulfillment. For a product shop, treat deal as: we and the buyer agree on the basket and conditions — still check whether money and stock moves have started.

Order (заказ)

An order is the operational object you fulfill: fixed lines, status, and usually an effect on stock (reserve or issue) and money (payment, COD, invoice). Packing lists and shipments hang off orders, not off vague leads.

How they chain for a shop

Lead — interest appears
Deal — terms of the basket agreed
Order — team commits to fulfill; stock/money rules apply

Many chat shops collapse 1–2 into one message thread. That is fine if you still know when step 3 started — otherwise two managers both “sold” the last unit.

Common confusions

Calling every DM a deal (inflates wins)
Reserving stock on cold leads
Saying “order” when only price was asked
Closing a deal in talk but never creating an order object anyone else can see

Optional next step

Write the three one-liners on a wall. When interest becomes an order your team can see, fewer units get double-promised — order lists in datalizeCRM are one way to make that visible, but the vocabulary comes first.